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Theatre and Performance Studies News

KSU presents musical theater RAGTIME; Focuses on turn-of-the-century New York

KENNESAW, Ga. (Feb. 28, 2019) — The Department of Theatre and Performance Studies
will present “Ragtime,” based on E.L. Doctorow’s distinguished 1975 novel, from March
14 to 24 at the Stillwell Theater at Kennesaw State University.

“Ragtime” features a large and intricate set from professor Ming Chen, video and image
design by Andre Allen of Blacklight Productions, and choreography by Angela Harris
of Dance Canvas. With its beautiful era-specific costumes and a live orchestra, this
will be an event you do not want to miss.

Musical theatre professor and director Amanda Wansa Morgan said, “The music is lush
and full of different styles, and the characters are rich. This production has an
amazing cast of 40 actors from our department who represent diverse ethnic backgrounds.”

Combining historical figures—including Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, and Booker T.
Washington—with fictional characters, “Ragtime” uses diverse musical styles to weave
together stories of volatile turn-of-the century New York from three different perspectives:
African Americans in Harlem, immigrants from Eastern Europe, and the upper-class suburban
white residents of New Rochelle, N.Y. Together, these characters confront and explore
what it means to live and fight for fairness and social justice in America.

Filled with historical information and context, “Ragtime” provokes serious questions
around themes of race in America, justice, imprisonment and liberation, suppression,
industrialization, integration and segregation, and the pursuit of the American Dream.

“Ragtime” was called “a triumph for the stage” by TIME and “the best musical in 20
years” by the International Herald Tribune when it premiered on Broadway in 1998.
Winner of four Tony Awards, the original cast featured Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes
Mitchell, and Marin Mazzie.

KSU Presents Fresh Take on Thorton Wilder's "Our Town"

KENNESAW, Ga. (Oct. 30, 2018) –– Kennesaw State University’s Department of Theatre
and Performance Studies (TPS) will present a new take on Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning drama “Our Town” when the play opens at the Stillwell Theater on the
Kennesaw campus, Nov. 6-11.

The play, set in Grover’s Corners, tells the story of everyday rituals—and big life
events—that bind us together as humans in our community. The fictional New England
town is based on Peterborough, N.H., where Wilder spent many summers.

Co-directed by TPS professor Margaret Baldwin and guest artist/musical director Christopher
Hampton, the production takes a fresh look at the play’s depiction of small-town American
life at the turn of the 20th century. The play made its Broadway debut in 1938, and
Wilder described it then as his attempt to present “the life of a village against
the life of the stars.” He was inspired from the towns among the New England hills
where he spent his summers as a tutor and—later a writer—at the MacDowell Colony,
taking long walks through the villages.

“In choosing to include ‘Our Town’ in our TPS performance season, we asked ourselves:
‘What does an American village look like today?’” said Baldwin. “From the start, we
knew that we wanted to bring together an acting ensemble that reflected contemporary
American life in its complexity and diversity with regard to race, ethnicity, gender
and sexual expression.”

Another goal, Baldwin said, was to challenge the actors to see their “town” from multiple
perspectives—and for audience members to have the chance to see different actors play
each role. To do so, TPS created one ensemble of actors that plays two different configurations
of roles. That ensemble—changing and evolving each night—serves as the central “character”
of the play.

TPS Interim Chair Rebecca Makus, who also is the production’s scenic designer, noted
how the play resonates with the theme of this year’s production season examining the
American experience from multiple angles. She asked, “Who are we past and present?
What questions have we asked (and continue to ask) about our national identity?”

Four women artists prepare a new vision for Flux Night in Grant Park

By Deanna Sirlin - Sep 24, 2018

This weekend, four artists — all Atlanta-based women — will unveil a new vision for
one of the city’s most popular art events, Flux Night. Rachel K. Garceau, Rebecca
M.K. Makus, Iman Person and Lauri Stallings (along with their respective collaborators)
will present four large-scale public works in Atlanta’s Grant Park for Flux 2018,
which for the first time takes place across an entire weekend, September 27–30.

“It’s a way of surveying our environment and its various emotions and needs with this
very powerful feminine presence in a very masculine environment,” says Stallings of
her work in process. “Our bodies work this way, our bodies have something to say,
through no muscular force, just the force of empathy.”

Flux Night debuted in 2010 as a free, one-night exhibition of public art in Castleberry
Hill. The combination of engaging contemporary works and an art-filled outdoor environment
proved enormously popular, and the annual event grew faster and larger than Flux Projects,
the small nonprofit that produces it, could reasonably manage. The event went on hiatus
in 2014 and again in 2016 and 2017 as the organization considered new approaches.

The new Flux will extend over four days with special focus times on each day, and
the event will culminate on Saturday night with a participatory, light-based happening.
Although Flux Projects previously sought to bring in public artists from outside the
city for the event, this year, all the artists are Atlanta-based.

The placement of the reimagined event in Grant Park is significant, says Flux Projects
executive director Anne Archer Dennington, with this year marking the 135th anniversary
of Atlanta’s oldest city park. “When we announced the artists for Flux 2018, I was
still looking for a fifth one,” she says, “but along the way I came to realize that
the park is the fifth creator in this work.”

Each of the artists will situate the content and form of her work in relation to the
history of the site. In 1883, Lemuel Grant, a businessman who owned over 600 acres
in Atlanta, gave the city the land for the park because he wanted residents to have
a place of refuge where they could experience nature close to the city. Designed by
the Olmstead Brothers (the sons of Frederick Law Olmstead, who designed Piedmont Park),
the park originally had a lake, which was drained for the zoo expansion; its creeks
and runoffs have since disappeared. Across its long history, parts of the park have
been neglected. The Grant Park Conservancy, founded in 1996, seeks to rectify problems.
Construction and environmental planning projects are currently underway in the ever-evolving
urban space.

Iman Person’s Waterlust will trace and recreate the lost waterways of the park with
iridescent flowing fabric hovering over the ground. Originally there were five springs
in the park, with only one now remaining. “For me, water holds qualities that move
beyond the material,” says Person, an artist who has worked across drawing, installation
and performance. “It is an activator, a soother of energies and also a conduit for
the subconscious. The little water left acts as a thin veil between Atlanta’s past
and also its deciding future.” The installation will have three totems that emit sounds
of nature. As a viewer follows the banners that stretch and flow across the park,
the new path will simultaneously reintroduce the landscape and remind participants
of the site’s history.

Following and moving are also central to the work of Rachel K. Garceau, a ceramic
artist who works in porcelain. Garceau’s installation Passage will be a labyrinth
set in the landscape with a series of handmade slip-cast porcelain stones. Participants
will be invited to carry pebble-like sculptures made by dozens of other artists on
their journey. “Working with porcelain requires a certain sensitivity and tenderness,”
she says. “Placing this fragile work in a public space is an exercise in trust and
also an invitation for visitors to reconsider places and objects in a new light. It
also speaks to the delicate nature of the park itself and of the flora and fauna who
call this place home.”

Movement, strength and fragility are also aspects of Lauri Stallings’ performance
work, Land Trees and Women. Viewers will be able to experience the work from sunrise
to twilight as Stallings’ group of eight female movement artists, glo, will “move,
lean, swarm and push” to convey the natural topography of the land. As viewers follow
these artists on their migrations, Stallings says, light will change, weather shift
and movements bend. For the first time, Stallings’ work will incorporate four modular
sculptures. “Encounter of the audience is unregulated,” says Stallings. “Social performance
belongs to a place and a people, relying on the transference from one body to another,
a symbol of sorts, a lost democracy. I don’t expect people to follow us for hours.
I recognize the endurance ritual here. We touched each other for a moment.”

Rebecca M.K. Makus and her collaborators Peter Torpey and Elly Jessop Nattinger will
be building a series of events titled Toolbox. Each day, the team will enter the park
with a wheelbarrow filled with a toolbox and simple materials such as batteries, LEDs,
clear tape, water, string and a clock. They will select a location, start the timer
on the clock and create a temporary performance/installation that they will also document.
The works are “sympathetic interventions into the landscape,” Markus says. “The park
has a really loud voice,” she explains. “We are transforming echoes of that voice
into materiality. Our installations mold themselves to the skin of the park highlighting
how the history of the park is written on its body.”

Describing the way artists respond to the natural world, Cézanne once said, “Painting
from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one’s sensations.” The artists
of Flux similarly aim to make visitors see how Grant Park is integral to the history,
landscape and life of the city as they overlay the natural landscape, intersect with
it and respond to it. As Stallings says: “The nature space is where I belong.” As
the artists embrace Grant Park, viewers also may encounter a new vision of a place
where they belong.

“Theater offers an exciting communication mechanism to convey cutting edge-research
findings to a wide audience, while simultaneously encouraging curiosity and imagination,”
says Amanda Freeman, instructor in the Center for the Study of Human Health.

The collaborators hope that this project will introduce the human microbiome — the
trillions of microorganisms that live in us and on us — to a whole new audience, providing
a spotlight for research that is being done right here on campus.

“I have found very few venues where new science and new art can emerge from a single
exercise, so ‘4:48’ is special,” says David Lynn, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of
Chemistry and Biology, one of several Emory science faculty offering support as resources
for the writers.

Inspired by Paula Vogel’s playwriting Bake-Off process, “4:48” asks playwrights Margaret
Baldwin, Rachel DuBose, Natasha Patel and Steve Yockey to each write a new play in
48 hours, all using the human microbiome as inspiration.

Before the clock starts ticking, playwrights will research the topic, including reading
science journalist Ed Yong’s masterwork “I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within
Us and a Grander View of Life.”

“Scientists, like most people, work in a bubble,” notes Lary Walker, research professor
in the Department of Neurology in Emory’s School of Medicine, another Emory scientist
serving as a resource for“4:48.” “For our discoveries to have full impact, they need
to reach the general public with clarity and force.

“Our fondness for jargon and our professional insularity can make this difficult,”
he continues. “I’ll be curious to see how the playwrights interpret Ed Yong’s fine
overview of the microbiome as a vital realm of nature.”

At the end of the two days, the writers emerge with four newly formed plays that are
then rehearsed with a cast of professional actors and presented in a marathon of free
readings.

“There’s something magical about writing a play in two days,” says Edith Freni, “4:48”
producer and former Emory University Playwriting Fellow. “The experience forces playwrights
to confront a lot of fears they have around process.”

Patel, whose recent play “Widowwood” was a semifinalist at the Bay Area Playwright's
Festival, embraces the opportunity to test her limits as a writer, through both time
and the unusual subject matter.

“A beginning, middle, and end. We don't simply write until the clock stops. We have
to create a complete, coherent narrative in 48 hours,” she says. “That's the ultimate
challenge — and one that requires a coffee reserve.”

And learning about the microbiome has her reaching for more than just coffee.

“How much of our bodies, its shape, size and functions, are attributed to our own
actions or formulated by microbes that control our actions?” Patel asks. “I've begun
a daily yogurt regimen, just in case.”

Sometimes called a “forgotten organ,” the human microbiome is a dynamic collection
of bacteria, fungi and viruses that is shaped by our actions and our environment,
including the people around us.

“Current microbiome research is exciting because it is starting to reveal the much
broader influence of our personal microorganisms on normal processes throughout the
body,” Walker explains.

“If specific microorganisms can be shown to regulate such things as metabolism and
brain function, they could become safe and effective treatments for such maladies
as metabolic disorder, depression and many more,” he notes.

Asks Lynn, “What could be cooler than knowing that we live on a planet that contains
millions of times more microorganisms than there are stars in the known universe,
and that at a genetic potential level, humans have been estimated to be 99 percent
bacterial and only one percent human?”

For playwright Margaret Baldwin, a faculty member in Kennesaw State University’s Department
of Theatre and Performance Studies, delving into the human microbiome reveals a hidden
universe of possibility.

“Starting to read ‘I Contain Multitudes’ is shifting my perspective of what it means
to be human and an individual,” she explains. “It is both scary and strangely liberating
to acknowledge that, as Yong says, ‘Every one of us is a zoo… A multi-species collective.
An entire world.’

“What does this say about the reality of the mind? What bacteria are driving our dreams?”

These are the types of questions Lynn, as a scientist and professor, hopes community
members who come in contact with “4:48” will begin to ask — questions that challenge
us to allow our understanding of ourselves to evolve alongside scientific advancement.

“Our scientific and technological advances nowoccur at a blistering pace,” he says.
“How can we put these advances, the growing understanding of our world, into the stories
that are so important to our lives?

“It takes art and science to help us tell those stories. Our survival is at stake.”

Readings of the work developed during “4:48” begin at 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 14,
in the Theater Lab of Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. All readings are
free and open to the public. For an updated schedule of readings and play titles,
visit the Theater Emory website.

This project was developed and is produced by the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory,
with initial funding from the Breaking Ground Project. “4:48” is being produced in
partnership with Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health.

About this story: Writing by Emma Yarbrough. Photos by Kay Hinton. 3D illustrations
of Enterobacteriaceae and Streptococcus bacteria via ThinkStock.

Dr. John Gentile To Receive NCA’s Heston Award

Dr. John Gentile, Professor of Performance Studies in Kennesaw State’s Department
of Theatre and Performance Studies, will receive the National Communication Association’s
Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance
Studies. NCA will present Gentile with the award during its 103rd annual convention
in Dallas, Texas this November.

The Heston award, which recognizes excellence in published research and creative scholarship,
comes on the basis of Gentile’s essay, “Shape-Shifter in the Green: Performing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (published in Storytelling, Self, Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Storytelling Studies). “Shape-Shifter in the Green…” builds on Gentile’s three decades of scholarship
in arguing an inextricable link between the seemingly disparate tasks of performance
and scholarship. To hear Gentile explain it, his goal is to illuminate the work of
what he calls, the ‘scholar-artist,’ thereby, “show[ing] the work in scholarship that
inevitably takes place behind the scenes in preparing a performance of a canonical
text like Sir Gawain.”

Gentile has always been attracted to what he refers to as, “masterworks,” those canonical
texts that are ultimately handed down and rediscovered across the distance of centuries.
As a result, much of his work as a scholar and artist has centered on the concept
of adapting and staging canonical works like Sir Gawain, Moby-Dick, and The Scarlet Letter for contemporary audiences. “I often wonder about the future of great works,” Gentile
explains. “If they are not embedded in our education experience, when will people
come upon them? And so I almost have a quest to ‘salvage’ works from a sense of loss,
whereby a work of true power and significance is reduced— to contemporary students—
to only a title they may have heard of.” According to Gentile, it is this task of
cultural curation that ultimately necessitates a link between scholarship and performance.
“Assuming the artist creating the adaptation of a major literary text for the stage
has done his or her work in analysis and in research,” the professor explains, “and
brings to it an effective vision, and makes it vital in the theatrical experience,
then that performance can lead audiences back to the original text itself -- as readers,
and that to me is the real benefit of doing the work I do.”

Given Gentile’s track record of both penning and staging engaging performances of
famous texts, and his impeccable ability to articulate the theory behind this process
in his work, it’s no surprise that Emerson College’s John Dennis Anderson called him,
“the preeminent exemplar… of the scholar artist [in the field of performance studies]”
in a nomination letter for the 2017 Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship
in Interpretation and Performance Studies.

Gentile’s celebrated scholarship and artistry will be on display on November 11, at
the Jung Society of Atlanta’s, “The Green Knight and Other Stories of Magic and Transformation: A Storytelling Program with Music.”

By Keaton Lamle

BWW Feature: PETER AND THE STARCATCHER at Kennesaw State University

Broadway WorldFebruary 9, 2017

At one point or another, we have all experienced the magic of Peter Pan and the legacy
that J.M. Barrie created over 100 years ago. Whether you have seen the films, read
the novels or seen the Broadway musical “Finding Neverland,” we have all wanted a
little bit of Tinkerbell’s fairy dust. Tuesday, I got to experience the story of how
a boy who did not want to grow up became Peter Pan in PETER AND THE STARCATCHER. The
production was executed by the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies of Kennesaw
State University under the direction of Professor Karen Robinson. With the audience’s
imagination being a critical prop, this show is perfect for Robinson’s unique theatrical
vision as you are reminded what it is truly like to use your imagination.

PETER tells the story of an orphan being held captive aboard a ship called the Neverland,
and a starcatcher with a top secret mission. Together, along with the help of some
lost boys, they tell the prequel to the story that we all know and love. It is a different
side of the classic tale that still makes you never want to never grow up.

The cast, comprised of students from the university, was led by CameRon Walker as
the orphaned boy named Peter, Alyssa Egelhoff as Molly the starcatcher and Tad Cameron
as the comedic role of Black Stache (aka Captain Hook). The rest of the cast includes
Joseph Ndoum, Truman Griffin, Carson Seabolt, Sully Brown, Amy Reynolds, Meg Harkins,
Caleb Silvers, ChristIan Smith, Steven Taylor and Laura Reboulet. The musical talents
of Alexander Crosett and Brooks Payne were additionally on stage. Every person in
the show clearly had so much fun sharing this story and it translated wonderfully.

The scenic design by guest artist Jeffrey Zwartjes was exceptional. The black box
hosting the show, lined with ladders, planks and the likes of a pirate’s ship, has
never looked better. The costuming, done by Jamie Bullins, was just as satisfying.
You just cannot go wrong with mermaid outfits made out of Chinese take-out boxes.

Kennesaw State University has a theatrical season comprised of plays, musicals and
festivals that faculty, staff and guest artists (all of which are industry professionals)
facilitate. PETER AND THE STARCATCHER is running through February 12 in their Onyx
Theater.

The Theatre and Performance Studies department will bring turn-of-the-century Russia
to the Stillwell Theater March 16.

Written by Anton Chekhov in 1901, Three Sisters was originally performed in Russian.
It has been translated into modern American English, and the actors do not use dialects,
though the setting is the same as the original play. Kennesaw State University’s production
is directed by Artistic Director and Department Chair Rick Lombardo.

“I think of Three Sisters as one of the great plays of modern drama,” Lombardo said.
“It’s really an examination of how life happens and how life can divert us from the
things that we think are most important.”

Lombardo said that the timeless themes in the show feel particularly poignant in our
society today, given the social and political unrest we are currently experiencing.

By Chandler Smith, KSU Sentinel

The “Three Sisters” cast poses in their costumes as they prepare for opening night.
Photo credit: Cory Hancock

“This play is set in a time with this huge upheaval, and people don’t quite know what’s
about to happen,” Lombardo said. “Core values are being questioned. As we’ve been
working on the play, we’ve been thinking, ‘This feels like now!’”

The cast of 14 theatre and performance studies majors ranges from freshmen to graduating
seniors. As the freshmen prepare to perform at KSU for the first time, several seniors
must say goodbye to the Stillwell stage after many years.

Three Sisters will be senior Danny Crowe’s 13th and final performance at KSU. Crowe
plays the role of Vershinin.

“This character kind of embodies what it’s like to find a home and have to leave it,”
Crowe said. “So this performance is sort of my love letter to the department and the
family that I have found here. It’s been an incredible time.”

“Three Sisters” runs in the Stillwell Theater March 16-26, Thursdays through Saturdays
at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m.

Margaret Baldwin Wins Teaching Award

Margaret Baldwin, senior lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies,
wins the Felton Jenkins Jr. Hall of Fame 2016 Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award for
Regional and State Universities. The University System of Georgia Board of Regents
review committee was impressed with Baldwin’s innovative approach to teaching, and
wrote, “You stood out to the committee because you use theater to promote global learning
and multicultural teaching, you grasp and apply the concept of assessing learning
outcomes to promote success of students, and you serve as a mentor to both faculty
and students at Kennesaw State University.” She was unanimously chosen as the award
winner by the committee. We talked with Margaret about her award:

Q. What does this award mean to you? A. I am honored and thrilled to receive this award and to see this testament to the
power of theatre, and the arts in general, as vehicles for engaged learning. In the
arts, we teach skills essential to prepare all students for successful work and civic
life beyond college. We employ teaching practices seen as essential to prepare students
for successful work and civic life beyond college: hands-on learning, collaboration,
critical thinking, communication, global perspectives and community engagement.

Q. What advice would you give to educators? A. Students learn by doing, so the big question is “how do you make the classroom
a site for engaged learning?” The basic tools of theatre are really great for teaching
and learning. We can take a written text––something hard for students to access––and
by doing exercises that get the students up on their feet and into their bodies, they
can learn those plays and and embody those concepts in ways that help them learn more
deeply. It’s a basic tenant of performance studies that I didn’t know about until
I came to KSU; it is embodied learning.

Q. Would you like to recognize any mentors? A. When I was at graduate school at University of Iowa, Erik Ehn, Anne Bogart, and
Naomi Iizuka definitely inspired and influenced me. Karen Robinson has been a great
mentor and collaborator at KSU. We work together to discover the connection between
theatre and global learning, and those intersections where the theatre becomes the
seed for conversation, dialogue, and mutual exchange that’s meaningful and cross-cultural.
That investigation is something that we’ve done together over the last ten years,
and it’s changed and expanded my vision of what theatre can and should do. We always
ask, “How do you take it beyond the theatre? How do you take it into the world?”

Rebecca Makus: An Artistic Vision

Grass is an interactive art installation that uses technology to give viewers a unique
experience with art. “The entire show is called “Ipomoea,” which is a type of night
blooming flower. It’s the idea that something exists between places… It ties into
this idea of taking man-made materials and urban environments and transforming them
into a place that feels like nature, that embodies that sense of liveness and growth,”
said Rebecca Makus, professor in the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies.

Along with her collaborators, Elly Jessop Nattinger and Peter Torpey, they will eventually
develop five modules: Grass, Stone, Tree, Water, and Soul. Nattinger works as a Google-experience
engineer and Torpey as a media-experience artist. Since then, Makus has applied for numerous grants and worked on a weekly basis with
Nattinger in San Francisco, and Torpey in Boston, making the most of a long-distance
collaboration. Along with this work, Makus juggled the joy of having a baby. “Being pregnant last fall and summer while I was doing all of this was pretty insane.
We had a three-week workshop last July for Grass, when my two collaborators came into
town… [But] everyone finds their pattern.” Desiring to push their artistic boundaries,
Makus and her collaborators brought in KSU’s Department of Dance Chair, Ivan Pulinkala,
and Co-Artistic Director of 7 Stages Theatre, Michael Haverty.

“We brought in two local artists to come and play inside of Grass: Michael Haverty
and Ivan Pulinkala. They came in and played in their art form. Michael had some puppets
for a piece that he’s working on and just played around [in Grass].” When Grass premiered to the public, it was a part of Creative Loafing’s “Best Of
Atlanta” series. Around 5,000 people attended the event, and the T. Lang Dance Company
performed inside the installation. Next in this creative endeavor is the development of the second and third modules
of Ipomoea: Stone and Tree. Stone, a collaboration with KSU students, will be finalized
in May while Tree begins development soon after. Water and Soul will be completed
by Spring 2017.